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Biden signs TikTok bill into law, starting clock for ByteDance to divest

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Re: Biden signs TikTok bill into law, starting clock for ByteDance to divest

#811

Post by inemesitaffia »

consumer451 wrote: post #777

I happen to personally agree with the general concept of making the CCP divest from the leading social media platform in the USA. I also wonder if the KSA should be forced to divest from X/Twitter. Prior to owning part of X/Twitter, they did this [0], which led to to the worst of what one could imagine. What is happening now? But my main question is, are there any other examples of forced divestiture, aside from Fire…

I have reason to believe they have owned part of Twitter just post Arab spring and now own less not more. It definitely didn't happen in 2022.

Did this infiltration happen before they owned part of Twitter?

Re: Biden signs TikTok bill into law, starting clock for ByteDance to divest

#812

Post by Tepix »

ThinkBeat wrote: post #372

I hope this will show the severity of threats countries face from social media and that things are no longer business as usual. Every European country /and/or EU/ECC as a block, as well as every other nation or block, should follow this up as soon as permitted to have all social media apps operated by a foreign country be subject to the same legislation. TikTok will have to sel to the US, Netherlands, France, Germany…

I'd argue that for european users, handing over a huge amount of data to american social networks with their lack of privacy protection is also highly problematic.

Perhaps the EU should do something similar to Facebook, X etc.?

Re: Biden signs TikTok bill into law, starting clock for ByteDance to divest

#813

Post by up2isomorphism »

US can easily use the free trade as the ground to ban TikTok, instead it uses an subpar excuses that often used by CCP. This shows how incompetent and how bad current US leadership is in term of understanding what makes US to a the most powerful country in the first place.

Re: Biden signs TikTok bill into law, starting clock for ByteDance to divest

#814

Post by logicchains »

gigatexal wrote: post #809

I see this as a national security threat that it is. The potential for abuse from the CCP on the minds of US users exists as does the tracking the app could do and every data point that is generated is stored and potentially useful for blackmail or otherwise on members of Congress or others. The US and its allies got rid of Chinese telecom hardware from their networks for the very same reasons now it’s time to do the…

>I see this as a national security threat that it is.

The US government is a far greater danger to the average American than the Chinese government is, and this bill just gives even more power to the US government to dominate its citizens.

Re: Biden signs TikTok bill into law, starting clock for ByteDance to divest

#815

Post by Argonaut998 »

BriggyDwiggs42 wrote: post #539

Look, I think this is potentially oversimplifying things, but imo this is just a reaction to the youth seeing pro-Palestinian positions on social media. The fervor around banning tik tok was reignited around the time that it started being more common to see such things on the app.

Absolutely. Trump proposed banning TikTok during his term and he was laughed at. As I said in another comment this is censorship (and Chinese style protectionism) being disguised as national security.

Even if there were efforts to ban TikTok before that time, this obviously escalated it.

Re: Biden signs TikTok bill into law, starting clock for ByteDance to divest

#816

Post by wannacboatmovie »

gigatexal wrote: post #809

I see this as a national security threat that it is. The potential for abuse from the CCP on the minds of US users exists as does the tracking the app could do and every data point that is generated is stored and potentially useful for blackmail or otherwise on members of Congress or others. The US and its allies got rid of Chinese telecom hardware from their networks for the very same reasons now it’s time to do the…

Musk has already alluded to bringing back Vine, so the eradication of TikTok would be no great loss.

As an aside, I always viewed TikTok as a real world analogue to the mind control subplot from Zoolander (Frankie says 'relax')...

Re: Biden signs TikTok bill into law, starting clock for ByteDance to divest

#818

Post by chipdart »

up2isomorphism wrote: post #813

US can easily use the free trade as the ground to ban TikTok, instead it uses an subpar excuses that often used by CCP. This shows how incompetent and how bad current US leadership is in term of understanding what makes US to a the most powerful country in the first place.

> US can easily use the free trade as the ground to ban TikTok, instead it uses an subpar excuses that often used by CCP.

I think this is the absolute best way to address this. It forces people to realize and acknowledge that even China's CCP is well aware that companies like TikTok are a major security threat which justifies this type of action.

I wonder why we have anonymous accounts spreading this nonsense that this is a mere trade issue, as if the problem is a company that generates well below $5B in revenue, and not the data harvesting operation and propaganda arm that it is designed to be.

Re: Biden signs TikTok bill into law, starting clock for ByteDance to divest

#819

Post by computerfriend »

logicchains wrote: post #814
gigatexal wrote: post #809

I see this as a national security threat that it is. The potential for abuse from the CCP on the minds of US users exists as does the tracking the app could do and every data point that is generated is stored and potentially useful for blackmail or otherwise on members of Congress or others. The US and its allies got rid of Chinese telecom hardware from their networks for the very same reasons now it’s time to do the…

>I see this as a national security threat that it is. The US government is a far greater danger to the average American than the Chinese government is, and this bill just gives even more power to the US government to dominate its citizens.

This statement is not obviously true.

Re: Biden signs TikTok bill into law, starting clock for ByteDance to divest

#820

Post by fallingfrog »

gigatexal wrote: post #809

I see this as a national security threat that it is. The potential for abuse from the CCP on the minds of US users exists as does the tracking the app could do and every data point that is generated is stored and potentially useful for blackmail or otherwise on members of Congress or others. The US and its allies got rid of Chinese telecom hardware from their networks for the very same reasons now it’s time to do the…

This whole thing is baffling to me. What are you talking about? What enemy? I would rather someone in China has my information than my own government. China has no power over me; my own government does. I don’t care if china knows whether I like cheesecake better than blueberry pie. They’re interested in monitoring their own citizens, im sure- for the same reasons our own government agencies and corporate behemoths monitor ours. But I don’t see what use china could have for data about Americans.

Look: the Cold War is over. And communism is a red herring. The world has changed. For some reason Americas elites view TikTok as a threat, probably because they don’t have the kind of total access to their servers that they’re accustomed to with American firms. But that has little to do with regular Americans. And there’s no argument other than decades old red baiting tropes they can think of to try to get us to care.

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